Who needs a pumpkin carving knife when we have lasers?

Pumpkin carving geeks across the world, put down your knives because the contest is over. We have found the most nerdy pumpkin out there. Above is a pumpkin undergoing a laser carving process to create a Medusa head that, when finished, could be enough to turn you to stone if you look at it directly.

Credit has to be given to the guy who dreamed this method up, MIT. student Dan Schulz. He decided that using knives to carve pumpkins was so last year, so set out to use some of his school’s laser cutting tools to create his pumpkin art. Schulz had his wife draw up Medusa for a template, then set to work extrapolating the burn points into the computers that control the laser cutters. Depth in the carving was created by the computer creating layers of cuts. The stronger the laser, the deeper the cut which gave a richer color when completed. Where the layering really stands out is when the pumpkin is lit in a dark area, then the work “shines” if you will.

The finished product took over three hours to make due to the complex layering that Schulz used to create this work of Halloween art. Each layer took 30 minutes to complete, but was slowed down further because vaporized pumpkin kept getting on the laser’s lens.

One of the other hurdles was the fact that pumpkins are not flat, but curved on the ends, which had to be compensated for since the laser cutter could not add that into the algorithm used to cut the pumpkin.

The full video, above, details the cutting process. Be careful — after watching you’ll want to rush to your local laser shop (or maybe a website) and purchase your cutter for next year.